The Ndless Team devotes itself to open your TI-Nspire to the greatest community programs, OS update after OS update since 2009. We have once again reopened the door for OS versions 3.9.0 and 3.9.1. TI-Nspires sold with pre-built OS 3.9.1 (HW-S) can now enjoy the sweet taste.

If you already have Ndless 3.6 for OS 3.6 installed, stick to it as OS 3.9 doesn’t offer much interesting, and Ndless 3.9 re-installation after reboot is computer-dependent.

Ndless is currently not compatible with OS 3.9. OS 3.9 has (once again) a downgrade protection that blocks downgrade to OS 3.6, do not upgrade to OS 3.9.

Unfortunately nothing can be announced for the moment about any upcoming Ndless update. Just stick to OS 3.6.

New users who just bought a TI-Nspire with OS 3.9 pre-installed will have to wait a bit for a solution (and there’s have always been one since 2010). Sorry for the delay, you can subscribe to this blog to be notified.

Setting up the GCC cross-compilation toolchain to make your own Ndless C/C++ programs on Linux is easy thanks to the build_toolchain.sh script of the Ndless SDK, but a bit long as everything needs to be built from scratch.

We’re now introducing the Ndless SDK Docker image. Docker is a platform to build and share applications through lightweight containers. The Ndless SDK Docker image packs the Ndless SDK and all its dependencies.

First make sure to update your Linux box to the latest version of Docker. Then run the two commands:

As you may know major updates of Ndless aren’t easy at all, and the hard work has taken us a few more months than we initially expected.

This versions opens the way for native programs to the latest generation of TI-Nspire hardware sold with the locked OS v3.2, from which many of you couldn’t downgrade. We now encourage all of you to update to the latest OS v3.6 and to keep it as we still don’t know what to expect from TI for next OS updates.

This Ndless v3.6 version was born thanks to great collaboration and determination of several community members, among which bsl, critor, Excale, Jim Bauwens, Levak, Lionel Debroux, lkj, tangrs, Vogtinator and myself (ExtendeD). If their names don’t already mean something to us, don’t forget to browse compu’s 100+ programs directory to try out this new Ndless version, as they also wrote a good part of it.

A few notes:

Most 3.1 programs will work as-is on this new 3.6, except some (Polydumper, mViewer, nClock, …) which need an update: you can already get them on tiplanet.org

The installation is non-persistent (i.e. non reboot-proof) for this OS version. This mean an (easy) reinstallation is needed after any crash.

Ndless is now distributed from its dedicated site, ndless.me. The guys at TI-Planet wrote a nice tutorial to guide you through the installation process.

Many of you have got a brand new TI-Nspire CX with the latest OS 3.2.4 for this back to school, and are coming here to get Ndless for a richer experience with the TI-Nspire. As you may have noticed Ndless is at the moment not compatible with OS 3.2.4, and this OS includes the usual anti-downgrade protection that prevent any Ndless 3.1 installation.

This post should give a bit of context and answer the frequent questions about Ndless compatibility.

Why is Ndless regularly blocked by OS updates?

Ndless and its SDK are the unofficial way to build and run advanced programs for the TI-Nspire in assembly ARM, C and C++, with full access to the hardware and OS services.

Ndless and some of the programs built for it have the side effect of breaking the trust model between TI and the standardized tests’ regulation bodies and the teachers community about the press-to-test feature and the physical distinction between CAS and non-CAS TI-Nspire (although it is actually purely software-based and circumvented by tools such as nLaunch/nLaunchy).Note that the ability to run games on the TI-Nspire is not really the point as games written with the official Lua API and SDK do exist.

TI chose to protect these features by locking the entiredevice (instead of protecting specifically the aforementioned features) against any extension and low-level access that Ndless can provide. As a result Ndless (unwillingly) poses itself as an immediate threat to TI’s business model for the TI-Nspire.

TI has for this reason been actively chasing each major version of Ndless since 2009 with anti-Ndless updates, anti-downgrade protections (alldefeated except the one in OS 3.2.4) and features against third-party code execution.

We (the Ndless community) believe that any device can ultimately be hacked, and that this is also true for the TI-Nspire. TI’s business model is flawed, the compatibility of Ndless with a new OS version is just a matter of time. TI’s competitors have understood this, but TI stubbornly forces the Ndless community and itself to play a cat-and-mouse game at each OS update.

When will Ndless 3.2 be available?

OS 3.2.0 fortunately didn’t include an anti-downgrade to OS 3.1 and let Ndless 3.1 live its life for a while. We (the contributors to Ndless and its SDK) have been able during this time to focus on useful features instead of playing the wasteful cat-and-mouse game, such as the nSDL library, the bFLT loader (that makes program porting easier), C++ compatibility, the string and Graphic Context API, host and device USB, GDB debugging and other Ndless Editor development tools.

OS 3.2.4 and its anti-downgrade feature now deprives many users who acquired a new TI-Nspire of the many third-party native programs available. The TI-Nspire community is now actively working on the update of Ndless, but this is not an easy task nor a deterministic engineering effort. Unfortunately no release date can be given (and obviously no date should be given that could be taken into account by TI for its OS release management).

How can I help?

If you are a regular user, send us a report of any reproducible reboot while using the standard functions and languages of the TI-Nspire. the Ndless installer indeed relies on unexpected behaviors for the installation of Ndless.

Now Levak brings nGC to the Ndless SDK. The “TI-Nspire Graphic Context” is a standard TI-Nspire API inspired by Java’s Graphics2D and based on Nucleus GRAFIX functions. If you have already developed Lua programs for the TI-Nspire the API will look very familiar to you.